A desperate District mother pleading with carjackers to let her grab her baby before they drive away. Mourners on a Northeast sidewalk hit by a hail of deadly bullets outside a funeral service. A Virginia woman brutally slaughtered inside a New York Avenue hotel room. A homeless man stabbed to death in front of a family in the Petworth Neighborhood Library.
Move over, New York, Chicago and San Francisco. The blood-soaked wave of lawless, often random, violence that has swamped America’s largest cities in recent years is flooding the streets of the nation’s capital — leaving residents on edge, national lawmakers frustrated and local leaders scrambling for answers.
District resident Sandra Seegars says the growing worries about crime have impacted quality of life in the city.
“There’s a lot of people I’ve talked to who are fearful of even going out of the house,” the anti-violence activist told The Washington Times. The sense of lawlessness, especially among young people, is pervasive.
“There’s no law to rein them in and they’re out of control,” Ms. Seegars said.
Since January, the District has seen a 13% increase in robberies, a 43% increase in carjackings and a 53% increase in sexual assaults. Most alarming is the city’s 12% increase in homicides, which comes after the District already recorded more than 200 killings in 2021 and 2022 — the first time Washington has suffered such high levels of violence in nearly 20 years.
“The whole criminal justice system is broken right now,” Ronald Moten, a longtime anti-crime activist and gang peacemaker, told The Washington Times.
The mayhem has fueled a 10% increase in violent crime and a 27% increase in overall crime so far this year.
“People should feel safe in our nation’s capital, and quite frankly they don’t,” said Rep. Russell Fry, South Carolina Republican, during a March 29 Capitol Hill hearing on crime in the District.
The crime wave has shown no sign of slowing in the weeks since, and Mayor Muriel Bowser and outgoing Metropolitan Police Chief Robert Contee are expected to return to the Capitol Tuesday to face more questions from members of Congress.
Lawmakers were particularly unnerved by the unprovoked stabbing of an aide for Sen. Rand Paul, who police said was attacked outside a restaurant on March 25 by an ex-con who had just finished a lengthy prison stint.
“He didn’t ask for anything. He didn’t say anything. He just started stabbing him,” Christopher Barnard, who was with his friend and victim Phillip Todd during the stabbing, told a Seattle radio station.
That H Street attack came after Rep. Angie Craig was assaulted inside her apartment building in February by another ex-con who had 12 prior convictions — most recently for assaulting a police officer.
Ms. Craig, Minnesota Democrat, told a home state TV station days later that the assailant trapped her in her building’s elevator.
“He wasn’t going to let me out … if I hadn’t fought my way out,” she said.
D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson — a major proponent of the District’s failed criminal code rewrite that would have reduced penalties for some felonies — insisted at the March congressional hearing that “there is no crime crisis in Washington,” but lawmakers were unconvinced.
“The crime statistics alone are shocking,” said Oversight Chair James Comer, Kentucky Republican.
Fear, loathing and parking tickets
The signs that something has gone profoundly wrong in the city are everywhere.
Frustrated by shoplifters brazenly hauling stolen goods out the front doors, some D.C. businesses are locking down and forcing customers in and out through a single choke point.
A Giant grocery store in the Brentwood neighborhood did just that last month.
Secondary exits to the grocer were blocked by shopping carts, with notice from company President Ira Kress saying that the changes were “due to a significant increase in crime and theft.”
Police data showed that the area around the store had seen a 150% increase in thefts compared to the same period last year. A fire inspector told a local media outlet that other Giants in the area have started to do the same thing.
Luxury retailers also have become targets.
A Lululemon store near the U Street Corridor had its front door smashed in February by thieves who quickly snatched up items. Days earlier, a mob of juveniles bum-rushed the Chanel store downtown, using a fire extinguisher to fluster patrons and employees while they made off with high-priced merchandise.
Chanel has since responded by locking its doors and having guards queue shoppers in a line outside until a staffer is ready to receive the customer.
Ted Leonsis, the owner of the Wizards and Capitals, is so unhappy about crime around the bustling Capital One Arena that he’s hired more off-duty D.C. police officers to work the area, according to a recent report.
But concerns about basic safety in the city are not limited to the relatively affluent and protected elites who live and work on Capitol Hill or in the high-profile entertainment or retail corridors.
Across the District, everyday residents are packing community meeting rooms to share frustrations over the chaos.
“Right now, there’s no moral compass in the streets — there’s no moral compass anywhere — and that’s the problem that we have in society,” Mr. Moten said during a March community meeting at the Petworth Library.
On social media, District residents share photos and stories of how crime is affecting their neighborhoods and families.
Developer Marcus Goodwin, a lifelong District resident who ran unsuccessfully for an at-large council seat in 2020, tweeted a photo Tuesday of the shattered driver’s window in his family’s car.
“Someone just broke into our car, while we were in our house,” he wrote. “It’s frightening raising a young child when you’re constantly in fear of who’s targeting your community. It’s time for DC to assemble a task force focused on reducing these crimes and protecting families.”
Fewer badges, more crime
The rise in crime has come as D.C. police staffing is at its lowest level in decades.
There are about 3,400 active duty officers working in the District, the fewest in roughly 50 years, according to Chief Contee.
The chief himself is a short-timer: the District native who joined the department as a cadet in 1989 announced that he’s leaving to take a job with the FBI. His final day is June 3.
Veteran cops have left in droves and the city has struggled to fill the vacancies — even after the mayor pumped up the signing bonus for new recruits to $25,000.
Finding a qualified replacement for Chief Contee, who clashed with city council members pushing for a more lenient criminal code in the city, won’t be easy, said D.C. Police Union official Adam Shaatal.
“The violence you’re witnessing right now needs to be addressed,” he said in a recent interview. “That’s going to make a real challenge for whoever is the new police chief.”
Critics contend that the crime problem in the District — where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by more than 10 to 1 and no Republican has been elected to public office since 2009 — can be partly blamed on the “defund the police” rhetoric embraced by city leaders.
At the March hearing, Rep. Nancy Mace, South Carolina Republican, cited anti-police comments made by Ward 6 Councilmember Charles Allen while decrying the District’s loss of more than 400 officers since 2019.
“‘Our strategy is to reduce our force size — ‘force size’ — in a responsible way by turning off the spigot plus adding in natural attrition,’” Ms. Mace said while reading June 2020 tweets from Mr. Allen, the former chair of the city’s public safety committee, during the March hearing. “What do you mean by ‘reducing our force size’ if you don’t mean defunding the police?”
The Washington Times reached out to the councilman for comment.
Prosecution statistics show that criminals aren’t being held accountable in the courtroom, either.
Data from the Justice Department revealed that 67% of the cases brought to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in D.C. were not moved along the legal process during fiscal 2022, which ended in September.
It’s a steady increase that climbed from 31% during the final year of the Obama administration to 48% during the final year of the Trump administration, according to local crime blog DC Crime Facts.
Federal prosecutors, who are nominated by the White House and confirmed by the Senate, litigate the District’s most serious crimes. Current U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves assumed his role in 2021.
Mr. Graves’ office has an even lower prosecution rate than the district attorney’s office in Philadelphia headed by District Attorney Larry Krasner (Mr. Krasner was backed for the office by left-wing billionaire George Soros).
Prosecutors under Mr. Krasner dismissed 63% of the cases brought to them last year.
A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office told the Washington City Paper that the lower prosecution rate is a combination of D.C.’s forensics lab losing its accreditation and prosecutors dropping cases after reviewing police-worn body cameras.
Charles “Cully” Stimson, a former prosecutor for the U.S. Attorney’s Offices in D.C. and San Diego who now works for the Heritage Foundation, had a different diagnosis for the lagging prosecution rate.
“What you have is a bunch of woke prosecutors who don’t want to take anything to court,” Mr. Stimson told The Washington Times, referring to some of his old connections to the office. He added that “80 to 90% of the cases brought to D.C. would be prosecuted” in the San Diego office.
Even some of the most basic laws governing civil interaction in the city are going unenforced — leading, in at least one high-profile case, to deadly consequences.
One of the vehicles involved in a fatal two-car crash on Rock Creek Parkway in March had racked up, before the accident, more than 40 speeding tickets and more than $12,000 in fines.
The District has more than $1 billion in unpaid traffic and parking fines spread across more than six million tickets since 2000, according to a recent Washington Post analysis. Over the past five years, the report said that about 1,200 cars are linked to fines of over $20,000.
Carrots and sticks
Republicans on Capitol Hill are echoing the scores of parents and city residents who say it’s time for the city to end the post-George Floyd policies that have hamstrung police and emboldened criminals.
“With this George Floyd incident, all the police in the whole world are accused of killing him,” Sanda Seegars, an anti-violence activist in the District, told The Washington Times. “It didn’t happen here. [Local leaders] should not treat the police here as if they killed George Floyd.”
Communities across the county, including the District, responded to the death of Floyd by reassessing criminal justice policies, including those covering young offenders.
Attorney General Brian Schwalb, whose office handles cases involving juvenile offenders in the city, told residents last month he opposes charging minors accused of serious crimes as adults.
“I don’t think kids should be treated as adults,” he said at a community forum on juvenile crime. “Kids are kids and when you’re talking about teenagers in particular — their brains are developing, their minds are developing, and they’re biologically prone to make mistakes — that’s what we’ve all done as we’ve grown up.”
The Chevy Chase resident, who has been in office less than five months, has taken over where his predecessor, Karl Racine, left off. Mr. Racine was one of the city’s most vocal champions of what he called “restorative justice” — an approach to juvenile crime that emphasizes rehabilitation and deemphasizes punishment.
But the increase in the number of children with guns committing robberies and carjackings over the last two years has stunned residents.
The 15-year-old who shot Washington Commanders player Brian Robinson Jr. during a stick-up last summer also pleaded guilty to killing another teen in an unrelated shooting in October. He will remain in custody until he turns 21, the longest amount of time a juvenile can serve under District policy.
His accomplice, 17, pleaded guilty for his role in Robinson Jr.’s shooting and was briefly at large after skipping his April sentencing hearing. The teen had his hearing last week after being re-arrested on drug distribution charges.
“They’ve got parents that’s afraid of their own child — [or] their grandchildren,” Bishop Donald Peters from the Potomac Baptist Church in Southeast told The Times.
Mr. Moten, the conflict resolution specialist, doesn’t think there should be a hard-and-fast rule that every minor who gets involved in crime should go to jail.
But Anacostia resident Ari Theresa said that officials have to consider locking up repeat offenders before they can commit a violent crime.
Mr. Theresa believes the District is seeing the inevitable result of the failure of local schools during the pandemic. School closings left many kids to their own devices and caused some of them to pick up unlawful — and often violent — habits that are proving hard to break.
“I feel like this is almost a lost generation that we may be dealing with,” Mr. Theresa told The Times. “I don’t see a lot of creativity to make up for that.”
Others argue any solution to crime in the District has to go beyond more cops and tougher penalties.
Pastor Anthony Minter from First Rock Baptist Church in Southeast said doing more to handle the basic needs of residents will cut down on the lawless behavior.
“To have your own house gives you a sense of dignity, it gives you a sense of pride, it changes your life and changes your outlook on life,” Mr. Minter told The Times. “Those are the kinds of things we’re doing working around [and] working to get folks decent jobs. Those are the things that I believe, done on a larger scale, will go a very long way in reducing the violence.”
Nazgol Ghandnoosh is co-director of research at the Sentencing Project, a District-based foundation that lobbies for the elimination of racial disparities in the criminal justice system. She said the reflexive desire for harsh prison sentences encourages the “punitive madness” that does little to tamp down crime.
Religious leaders say faith has a role to play as well.
Bishop Peters told The Times that helping people “understand the love and the power of God” should be a priority.
“They don’t have to throw in the towel, no matter what it is that they may have done,” Mr. Peters said. “There’s still hope for them — things can change — but they can’t do it by themselves.”
One thing all the people who spoke with The Times agreed is that the crime isn’t as bad as it was in the crack-addled 1990s, when the city, with roughly 400 homicides a year, became known as the nation’s “Murder Capital.” As Pastor Minter remembered, there were at least one to two funerals a week at First Rock in Southeast.
But after nearly 30 years of declining violence — and especially since the onset of the pandemic — crime victims, residents and lawmakers are worried the District is making a run at reclaiming that infamous nickname.
